Life Incarcerated
by intallah
Summary: Hidan backstory---he was born into hatred.
1. into this strange world

**Life Incarcarated**

**Part One**

**Charactersnot mine. Enjoy!**

Hidan was born into hatred. He learned the language early on, the fine art of tension and the brutal oeuvre of violence. You are _nothing_, his mother spat out when she was drunk, and her slap rang out like a scream in the house where the air felt as close and thick as oil. His mother was a storm and his father was the deadly calm before it, his wordless eyes searching his son's body for something that was never there. _You are a ghost,_ his father told him, _Disappear._ Disappear.

Nothing existed, nothing was real, he told himself, hanging on to those words in the deadly nights, when the darkness threatened to swallow him whole and he heard nothing, the silence concealing too many secrets. Sometimes he wandered through the empty halls of his house, each room so taut and dark that they seemed to be guarded by invisible sentries. He peered into his parent's room, his mother with her thin arms flung over her face and his father, lying on his side still and silent. He couldn't sleep, couldn't handle retreating into the thicket of his dreams where he never knew how to escape.

His father's anger was quiet and sad as the shadows. "Do you know," He asked in a voice that spoke of hollow, echoing hallways, "How easy it is to kill a man?" He shook his head slowly, eyes peering forward into nothing. "Too easy. Humans are made to break, to disappear. Nothing lasts. We decay."

Hidan hadn't said a word, just stared at his father with wide, wanting eyes. But his father had no love to give him, just the fear and grief of his words. "Breakable. You see how tender flesh is? No man is made of armor. Our hearts are fragile, beating tenderly as the wings of a sparrow. We are nothing really, clever bits of compost."

"Ideas," Hidan had whispered, and his father gave no indication that he had heard, "Couldn't ideas last, or stories?" His father laughed, a harsh, monosyllabic sound and raked a hand through his colourless hair.

"Only to those who believe in them." He touched Hidan then, grazed his shoulder with his wide, long fingered hand. "Smart boy," he said softly and at that moment, to Hidan, it meant the world.

His mother was the tempest to his father's fathomless blue. Her hair was the colour of the sun but her eyes were dark as shadows, navy and purple, like a perfect bruise bleeding into white skin. She called him her darling when she was pleased, her voice soft and hoarse from the cigarettes she never promised to quit. "Come here, my darling boy, my sweet," she murmured, voice quiet, treacherous, "Come to your tired old mama,"

Hidan came every time, drinking in the scent of her smoke and perfume, burying his face in the softness of her stomach and wrapping his arms around her thin waist. Her embrace was strong, hands gripping his small shoulders as if she were drowning. _I can save you,_ Hidan wanted to tell her so, so badly but the words never came. He just a child and she was the queen his world revolved around.

She was hardly ever pleased. Most of the time she was terrifying. Her eyes burned behind the façade of her hatred and her hands twisted and clenched as if trying to strangle someone. "Stupid boy, thoughtless boy," Her voice became a snarl as she choked over her smoke, "Useless, useless boy," She was reckless with her words. She never apologized but sometimes she would go to Hidan after he had left, tired of her anger and she would touch his back, his neck, bring her lips to his cheek wordlessly and he would know.

She only hit him when she was drunk, her words reeling and her eyes fiery and unfathomable at the same time. She screamed her hate then and slapped him until his face blazed red. His father would retreat, disappear into the shadows but Hidan would stay until his mother collapsed, either in tears or in faint. He would go to her then and take her hand, brush her hair back from her damp face, his own still throbbing. He would kiss her clumsily, his lips brushing her hot skin, her perfumed hair. She would murmur sometimes, telling him to get away, silly child, she hated him. But he always stayed with her until she went silent, until his father returned hesitantly to put her to bed.

"You should not stay with her," his father said one evening, returning from his bedroom. Hidan touched his bleeding lip gingerly, peering down at the crimson on his white fingers and wondering why the pain comforted him. "Just leave her, Hidan."

"I can't," he said and his father shook his head.

"Love makes us more fragile, Hidan, do you know that? It peels away our hide until we are nothing but a feeble, beating heart, easily punctured." His father looked away from him as he spoke.

"You don't love us?" Hidan's voice sank to a whisper and his father was silent.

"It was too late for me," his father said, "Too late and now look at me." He left, left his tiny ghost of a child alone in the house where the darkness was bigger than anything else.

Hidan's father hid all day. He had been a shinobi, a good one, until his back was twisted and both his legs broken. He disappeared, hiding from his old friends, hiding from death, the death he imagined behind ever corner. When Hidan told his father he wanted to be a shinobi his father only shook his head and said "Do as you wish, to whatever end." His mother sneered and told him to try and bring some sort of honour to their broken family. Honour. He was eight years old and he had never heard of honour before, only in storybooks, long lost fables.

He enrolled in the academy, a tiny, pale child who threw with deadly precision but had weak chakra. He was too eager to find something to specialize in, an area where he could push himself. He looked upon the shinobi with bloodline limits with sickening envy. They were special, they were _talented_. They were honourable. He was nothing but another generic kid, trying desperately to be a ninja. It frustrated him and he was silent at school, speaking less and less at home.

"They're ruining you," His mother hissed, "You used to be such a clever little boy, weren't you?" She touched his hair, stroked his cheek, "Now you're blind to everything but your own power, I can tell, even if you refuse to speak. Do you really want to kill people, little one? You could sell dango instead or make ramen or lanterns. Wouldn't you rather do that? Hmm?" Hidan shook his head, buried his face in the crook of her neck and she hugged him close, "Look at you, Hidan, you nothing but a little empty shell." Her words were sorrowful, at the same time harsh and sardonic. He wondered for the first time whether she loved him at all.

His father feared death. It was only after Hidan learned of the necessity of killing that he realized how heavily his father's fear weighed on him. It was in every word he spoke, every move he made, that numbing, debilitating fear. "Careful, Hidan, careful or you will see how easily it is we crumble-" his words were a poison, dense and harsh with his fear.

"I am not afraid, father," Hidan said, his quiet voice barely used and his father nodded shortly, fleetingly pleased and for a moment he shed his fear, that long lost glint returning to his eyes.

"Then find your voice, find it and use it, Hidan. Conquer with it. Bring your opponents to their knees." His father nearly laughed, but he caught himself and said solemnly, "If that is the path you choose. Let it be, and pray for a swift death when the time comes."

"Yes, father." Hidan nodded, struck by the power in his father, the power that had been all but locked away. He knew the story well, how his father's injuries had shocked his mother into labour, how he had been born a month early, how he had been born into nothing but anger and tears, pain, fear and regret.

The day he turned nine he decided to specialize in weapons because he liked the certainty of it all, the visceral thrill of wielding a weapon. He liked the feeling of something like a sword or a knife, something you could defend yourself with no matter what. He had no interest in fooling around with chakra and genjutsu. A weapon was the most basic defense and one he intended to use well.

His first real injury was a long, deep gash across his shoulder, courtesy of his frequent sparring partner Osayaka Genji. He had seen the katana come down hard across his shoulder, seen the spur of dark blood and seen Genji's face whiten, hear his stuttering apologies. But he only looked at the wound with simple fascination, the dark crimson stain spreading down his chest. The pain was sharp and the blood flowed fast but all he saw was the simple beauty of the abundance of the red that bloomed across his shoulder and collar, hot and sticky. Even the pain lessened after a while, as the blood drained from his face and his breathing became shallow. He sunk to his knees and saw nothing but his sensei's worried face and a haze of scarlet. He held onto the pain, because it seemed like the only real thing at the time.

He woke up in a hospital bed, his mother white and tense beside him. "Jesus, Hidan you had better be more careful." She said quietly, running her hand over his forehead. "This nearly killed your father." Her laugh was harsh and made Hidan feel like crying, something he had no memory of ever doing. "You're just a baby, you shouldn't be doing this," She said, "Just my little baby." And he hated her then. Hated her deliberate condescension.

"I'm not a baby!" He snapped childishly, but she only laughed softly and smoothed his hair back.

"I made umeboshi onigiri," she said in a gentler voice, "Just for you, darling." But Hidan didn't believe her this time-he didn't believe her _darling_, or her forced kindness. A couple weeks later when she got drunk and struck him he walked out of the room, not looking back, despite her injured yells. His father was standing at the end of the long hall, shrouded eyes looking over Hidan's head.

"They're making you a shinobi," he said softly, stooping to lay a large hand over Hidan's shoulder, where the scar was still tender and sore, "Locking your heart away. Does it hurt?" Hidan looked up at his father who still stared straight ahead. He shook his head. Slowly. Reluctantly. His father said nothing, walking past him to the room where his mother wept. Hidan watched as his father took her into his arms, pressed her sobbing body to his chest. She clung to him and Hidan felt like he was invisible, a faceless voyeur, intruding upon something private. He watched his mother lift her drowsy head and press a kiss to his father's lips. Their love was painful to watch, more painful than his shoulder, more painful than his mother's slaps, more painful than anything. It couldn't be love, because all it did was bind them, chains they both tried to shake off but couldn't. In horror he wondered if those chains had managed to bind him too.

He was getting good; he could feel it. He could feel the stares on him at the academy, the adults who were impressed and frightened by the ferocity he had, body moving almost too fast to track among his opponents. He became a Genin easily when he was nine and within a year he had been nominated for the Chuunin exams.

"He's just a child!" His mother had hissed in between fits of coughing, "He's ten years old! He's a silly, empty headed little boy, you cannot take him from me." Hatred roiled in Hidan's chest, a desperate hatred towards his selfish mother.

"I…" He was acutely aware of how soft and childish his voice sounded as his mother turned her gaze on him, the dark violet of her irises radiating something unreadable and foreboding. "I'm not a child," His voice sank to a whisper, he frowned and his mother sighed.

"My baby," she whispered, holding her hand out to him and the hatred flared again, "Come to your sick old mama, don't do this to her," her voice softened, lilted and Hidan's sensei's face grew uneasy.

All he heard were his father's words, the ones he hadn't thought about in months-_Conquer with it, bring your opponents to their knees._ His voice. He had forgotten he had one. His mother's eyes were hard again; her incongruous smile did not reach them. What use was he without a voice? No matter how brutally his weapon fell he would be nothing in silence. The silence that seemed to follow him wherever he went, the silence that threatened to take hold, even now in the bright, bustling room of the academy.

"I'm not-" he struggled with the words, grappled against them, trying to find one that fit, one to throw at her, but nothing came, so he _spoke_ without thinking, spoke unarmed. "I'm not your _fucking_ baby." He felt the blood drain from his face as he said it, the savage words sounding ridiculous coming from him. His sensei's eyes widened and his mother's face was unreadable for a moment before she reached out and slapped him. He didn't move because her slaps weren't that hard after all, not as hard as they used to be.

"Shinobu-san!" Hidan's sensei was next to her in an instant, staying her hand, "Please,"

"It doesn't matter!" Hidan cried, "I'll do whatever I want!" And not even the tears that collected, glittering in his mother's eyes softened him. He turned and walked away, ignoring his mother's shouts, although everyone else turned their heads. He didn't feel guilty because he knew now that his mother did not matter. His parents were nothing, broken and weary and thrown together in a life they did not ask for. He didn't have to be like them, he could reach out and grasp whatever it was that was heading for him. He didn't need his mother's love. Love, after all, only made one more fragile.

He knew it would be a bad idea to go home, but he did anyway because he was still just a little boy and had nowhere else. He knew his mother would beat him, he knew her anger would be complete, but rather than dreading it he looked forward to it. He was stronger than her now anyway, with power in his hands and a katana strapped to his back and finally, finally a voice, stronger than any steel.

He went to his room and began packing, without having decided to leave or not. He packed his clothes, his weapons and a toothbrush. He packed some sweets. He wasn't paying attention to anything but the door, waiting for his mother to come in with a raging storm behind her. In the other room his father was silent, sitting at the window and staring at nothing in particular. It was quiet, silence again, trying to swallow him.

The door slammed and Hidan leapt to his feet as his mother came in a rush into his room.

"Fuck!" She shrieked, "How _dare you_? How dare you?" Her face was tear streaked, her voice straining and grating in her throat. She darted towards him, her movements quick but predictable. He could have dodged, could have been behind her before she knew it but he didn't move. He wanted to see, wanted to see what she would do with her anger or rather, what she could do.

Her strikes were slow but vicious, her nails sharp, clawing at his cheeks. He stood and let the pain wash over him, again and again. It came in waves, crashing against him and he did not move. She could do nothing to him, he knew. She was ferocious but feeble and weak while he felt as though his skin was lacquered, protected against her blows.

Her words did not matter now. He could remember a time when he built his world on her words, her simple words. He kept her kisses and her touches as if they were treasure; he hoarded them. It didn't matter now, did it? It couldn't.

"Get away from me," he hissed and she laughed.

"You silly child! Those words aren't for you!" She fell to her knees coughing and Hidan wiped the blood from his chin and darted over to her, closing his hands around her heaving throat. She looked up at him her eyes wide and hateful.

"I don't give a shit," he said, "how stupid I sound. You leave me alone, your heartless bitch." He looked up briefly and saw his father standing in the door, eyes finally meeting Hidan's.

"Put her down, boy." His father said, voice steady and quiet, "Let go of her."

"No!" Hidan snarled, tightening his hands so his mother gasped for breath, "She deserves to die!"

"I can't let you," his father whispered, stepping forward. For a moment Hidan lost sight of him and then he was suddenly flung backwards, his mother falling back with a hollow thud, gasping and writhing. Hidan looked up into his father's face, the man was breathing heavily, his face strained. "You may have severed your chains, Hidan, but mine will still hold. Now leave, if you must, leave or stay but do not linger."

All Hidan felt was revulsion; revulsion at his father's weakness, revulsion at his mother's uncontrollable anger, her deep gasps and shallow moans. He leapt to his feet and he ran, leaving everything behind.

_end part one_


	2. new soul

_Part Two_

_New Soul_

"Destruction is all that matters, something complete and vicious. Something you feel, something that rips through your being in a state of perfect agony." The man's eyes were reverent beneath his hood, his grin showing perfect, pointed white teeth. Hidan liked him, liked the way his frenetic energy put him on edge. The man was beautiful, his face ageless and flawless as if it was painted. Blood stained the hem of his cloak, and his smile was fixed and fierce. Hidan wanted to be him.

"Destruction, seriously?" Hidan asked, "That's all?"

The man shook his head, "There's more. It takes hundreds of years to learn the teachings of Jashin."

"I'm not sure if I have hundreds of years."

"You will," another perfect, pointed smile, "Trust me."

The first one had been a Zen Buddhist priest. Hidan didn't know exactly what drove him to it but he had been starving and the man's slow words had frustrated him. The monk must have seen him, a young, thin boy as aching for some sort of spiritual fulfillment. An urchin he could take in and clothe and feed and teach. But Hidan was determined not to be that wayward boy. Something-he still couldn't decide what-flooded his mind and he found himself thinking about how _wonderful_ it would be to see this man's blood, hear his last feeble gasp of life. He leaned forward, small hands coming up to grip the monk's throat. The man's eyes widened but there was no fear, not yet, he would not be frightened of a half-starved twelve year old with lonely, desperate eyes. So Hidan had dropped his hands and the man's mouth quirked into a half smile and Hidan pulled out a hidden knife and drove it through the man's throat before his smile could disappear.

The second had been a bandit. Nothing special, a sickly, half-crazed bandit who had snuck up behind Hidan and wrapped a filthy hand around his throat, pressing the cool silver of a knife against the jugular. Hidan froze; "Far from home, runt?" The bandit's whisper was low and desperate and Hidan ducked out of his grasp, knocking him backwards and drawing his katana with deadly efficiency, pressing the tip to the man's chest wordlessly. The bandit's mouth fell open and he made to scramble back but in an instant Hidan stabbed down swiftly, slicing his chest open, watching the rich crimson spread across the man's tattered robe. It wasn't just strength and it wasn't just power, it was something else altogether, something dizzying and meaningful and something he couldn't understand for the life of him. The bandit didn't die right away. He gasped and writhed on the ground, eyes rolling in pain. It was knowledge, the knowledge that he had just destroyed everything the bandit had ever had, ever worked for. He had taken a man's life into his hands and he had decided to end it, to nullify his entire existence in one slice.

"What was it you wanted, asshole?" Hidan had said roughly, in his still childish voice, "What was it you were going to kill me for?" The man was opening his mouth, but only a groan escaped and his eyes slid shut, the last breath bursting from his lips.

The wild-eyed monk would have been the third. He stopped Hidan on the street saying, "You, boy, you look hungry." And Hidan had lunged at him, too bloodthirsty to think. But the monk grabbed his wrist and Hidan froze as if he had been burned. Fear had gripped him, for the first time in years because the man's strength was not tough and malleable, but hard and cold as ice, sharp and painful.

"Let me go," Hidan hissed, but the man only laughed and the sound rushed down Hidan's spine.

"Come along, little one, I can tell you a story," The man's eyes were hungry, but not in the same way as Hidan's were. Hidan's was a feeble hunger, born of need and weakness. This man had everything he could ever want; his hunger was simply greed for more.

"Get away from me, fucker," Hidan said coldly even though he didn't want the man to get away, he wanted him to stay with his strength and his greedy, dark eyes.

"What are you looking for?" The man hadn't let go of him, his fingers tightened and Hidan hissed, "I can show you everything you need," He grinned and Hidan was fixated, riveted. "I can make you just as strong as me." His voice was a whisper now and Hidan nodded slowly.

"How can I trust you?" He said, fighting to keep his voice steady. The man shook his head.

"You can't. But if you do, you could live forever. Everyone wants that, don't they?" The man's whisper was a growl and Hidan turned to stare into his eyes. They were dark, shot with crimson and though they were bright they looked static, dead.

"Show me," Hidan said, feeling like a child again, his voice slipping into anxious silence. The man's face broke into a wide grin, wolf-like.

"My pleasure."

Hidan would always remember the blood. There was blood everywhere, in his eyes, in his mouth, sticky and hot between his fingers, salty and thick on his tongue. The pain was nothing; it had been blurred and forgotten, diminished by the greater pain that came later. But Hidan had never seen so much blood, enough wet scarlet to blind him, so unbearably hot. The blood weighed him down; it anchored him to that one excruciating moment, the last moment of consciousness when he signed his life over to a God who had never spoken to him.

The man was speaking, or chanting or something but Hidan could not understand the words he was saying, although something in his mind was telling him that it was probably important. But all he felt was a hot explosion of power, bursting through the boundaries of his body and spilling into the heated air like light. All he saw was red, even as the power tightened around him and he felt the parameters of his being once more, unbearably condensed. And then he was nothing but himself, bleeding and shaking on the laughing ground and his power had collected into a smooth, burning stone pressed deep into his heart. He didn't know which was beating, his heart or this stone, this jagged, holy power that seemed to reside in his chest now, expanding and contracting with his every gasp. It squeezed his heart, surrounding the organ, smoldering steel wrapping around the fleshy helplessness of his heart, it suffocated his heart until he was sure it had replaced it altogether. Each beat seemed to shake him, every contraction made him grit his teeth, hands clenching into fists he could no longer see.

Finally he heard the voice, the torrid voice of the being that had become his god. "You can do nothing," the voice was smooth and sharp at once, throbbing in his brain and overtaking his senses, "Nothing but serve me, and destroy in my name. Beauty can only be found in death. Beauty and death, in a glorious, burning blaze of blood and heat, the cries of women and children. The taste of blood on your tongue, bodies rotting in the sun, steel through flesh."

_Stop,_ thought Hidan but he knew it was far too late, he could feels Jashin's claws sinking through the weak flesh of his brain, his sharp white teeth whispering curses and prayers, pulsing through his veins in a dizzying new power.

"You want this," Jashin's voice is too low to be a hiss, but too refined to be a growl, "Choose, child, my love or your death, my power or your death. Our power. Your power."

_Give it to me,_ Hidan's want was too large for his chest, it billowed through him, a wish too vast to be uncontained, _make me a legend, make me all there is between life and death. Make me fucking great._ And Jashin was silent. All Hidan felt was the steady, painful beat of the stone within his empty chest, cooling now. He could not feel his heart, that perishable organ, so precious and so easily punctured. He did not think, he did not move. He shut his eyes against the crimson and prayed to his new God.

/end part two


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